HATERS

07.29.13

Twitter vs. Jane Austen Pound-Pusher

Caroline Criado-Perez, who got Jane Austen on the £10 note, was attacked by some Twitter users.

The woman who successfully led a campaign to get a woman besides the queen on British bills is now facing Twitter abuse in the form of death and rape threats. Caroline Criado-Perez led a movement to get Austen on the £10 note despite some leaning toward Winston Churchill. She said she received “about 50 abusive tweets an hour for 12 hours,” one that led to a man’s arrest. Criado-Perez tried to report the abuse to Twitter directly, but she said the current form is not easy to entertain in situations of massive abuse such as this. The activist then created a petition in the U.K. to ask Twitter to add a “report abuse button” and now has raked in more than 50,000 signatures. It's also elicited a response from the head of Twitter U.K., Tony Wang, who said, “We’re testing ways to simplify reporting, e.g. within a Tweet by using the ‘Report Tweet’ button in our iPhone app and on mobile web.”